Kelton's Rules

Jack gave her a steely smile. Lots of people didn’t like lawyers. Just as well that Abby was one of them. Last thing he needed was to chase a woman in the midst of the Divorce Crazies. Been there, done that, honey, with the scars—and the kid—to prove it. “Have a nice day, Abby.”

“You, too. And…thanks for retrieving my bus.” She turned away before he did.

A lesser man might have slammed the gate. Jack closed it with a precisely calibrated firmness. The top hinge tore away from the post.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS BO-O-ORING sanding the planks. Kat had enjoyed the feel of a big, vibrating block sander in her hands for maybe five minutes—then it got old. And she’d felt kind of superior at how impressed Sky was that she knew how to use power tools, but then that good feeling had faded, too. Now it was nothing but rumble up the long plank laid out on two sawhorses in her yard, then buzz back the other way.

Each time she turned and faced Sky, who sat on the kitchen steps, she made a horrible face. Since she was using the enormous earphones her dad had insisted she wear to protect her hearing, she couldn’t hear Sky’s resulting laughter, but she could see it.

By the third time, he was making faces back at her. From then on it was a contest: who could make the grossest, most terrible face?

After what must have been hours and hours, Marylou came out on the stoop—her soap opera had probably stopped for a commercial—so Kat made faces at her.

Mushy, gushy Marylou. Kat had actually seen her stick her tongue—her tongue!—in Peter Sikorsky’s mouth last night. They hadn’t realized she was sitting at the top of the stairs while they were on the couch. Revolted by that disgusting spectacle, Kat had decided it was time to go. She’d crawled out her bedroom window to the branch of a tree, then to the ground and away.

And why don’t you go away, she silently told Marylou. Marylou was gooey nice to her when her dad was around. Other times they did their best to ignore each other. Kat touched the tip of her tongue to her nose, well, nearly to her nose, crossed her eyes and wobbled her head back and forth like a dizzy duck.

Marylou shook her head pityingly and went back indoors. Sky almost fell off the steps laughing.

The next time Kat completed her dreary circuit and looked his way, she stopped short and grinned. Sky was standing on his head on the top step, with his mouth twisted into a sneer, which looked like a loony smile upside down.

She switched off the sander. “Not bad.” She would have to try a headstand like that, with her forearms down on the ground. If he could do it, surely she could, too. “Where’d you learn that?”

“My mom does yoga.”

“And she does that?” Kat was impressed.

While she changed to a fresh square of sixty-grit paper, Sky turned right-side up again and came to stand beside her, running his palm gingerly along the board. “Still pretty rough.”

“Yeah,” she agreed glumly. “I have to sand ’em all—” she nodded at the stack of planks “—with sixty grit, then eighty, then Dad’s still deciding about one hundred. I’ll be sanding till I go back to school in September. Till Christmas!” Or maybe she’d die of boredom first.

“He’s pretty tough,” Sky observed.

“Yeah.” But he was fair. Like Justice, the blind lady with the scales that he always claimed he was dating on those rare occasions when he dressed up and went out at night—leaving Kat stuck with Marylou.

“Tough is good,” she defended him when Sky looked too sympathetic. “Navy SEALs are tough.”

“Not as tough as navy aviators.”

“Huh! They’re much tougher.” Someday she’d be a SEAL, just like Demi Moore in that movie, if she didn’t become—

“No way! Pilots have to handle terrorists and thunderstorms and icing on the wings and—” He shrugged. “They take care of people every day. My dad’s a pilot.”

“Really? In the navy?” Kat felt a twinge of envy. Her dad only worked in a stupid office.

“Um, no,” Sky admitted, fiddling with the sander. “He used to be, but now he’s a commercial pilot. Flies for American Airlines. He flies all over the country.”

That was still way cooler than sitting in an office, filling out forms. “Is that where he is right now, flying?”

“Yeah…” Sky didn’t look up. His hands had stilled on the sander. “That’s…why he couldn’t come with us. But he’ll catch up with us later on. Sometime soon. He can fly to meet us just about anywhere.”

“There’s an airport—a little airport—here, outside of town. But I guess he couldn’t land his jet.”

Sky shrugged. “That wouldn’t stop Dad. Sometimes for fun he rents a twin-engine plane, a Cessna. I was—I am going to learn to fly. He’ll teach me when I’m older.”

Kat could think of nothing to match that. So she put her earphones back on, crossed her eyes and twitched her upper lip and nose like a chewing rabbit, then sanded away.

The next time she swung around with an even better face, Sky had wandered off to the carport and stood kicking the tires of her dad’s winter car, the Subaru he’d accepted in trade for some legal work. Sky looked as bored as she felt. If only she weren’t grounded, she could take him around Trueheart. Show him the creek that ran through the center of town and how she could catch fish with her hands. They could buy ice cream at Hansen’s.

It would be nice to have a friend in Trueheart. She and her dad had only moved up here from Durango last fall. The girls were all mushy and prissy and talked about nothing but boys. The guys were more interesting, but then she’d tackled Sam Jarrett, a really big eighth-grader, in a football game last October. She’d sat on his foot and wrapped her arms and legs around his calf and ridden him almost to the goalposts before she’d brought him down. But instead of being impressed, the other boys had fallen all over themselves laughing. Ever since then, they just smirked when she asked if she could play. And Sam flat-out hated her. She sighed, realized her sandpaper had gone dull and stopped.

Sky appeared beside her with another square all cut to size and ready.

“I’m going to sail away on a tall ship someday soon,” she confided as she fastened it into place. “Like Rafe Montana’s daughter, Zoe. She sailed all over the ocean counting whales and dolphins. I’m going to be a ship captain someday, for Greenpeace, and I’ll save the whales.” If she didn’t become a navy SEAL; it was a hard choice.

“Cool.” Though Sky didn’t sound very interested.

But maybe he had a stomachache or something. He looked sort of funny and distracted, the way her dad had the time he’d eaten the bad taco. Her stomach rumbled at the thought of food. Or maybe Sky was just hungry.

The next time Kat stopped, she opened her mouth to ask if he’d like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but he spoke first. “You know how to weld?”

“Uh-huh. Um, well, sort of. I’m teaching myself.” She’d learned the most important lesson last night. You should never leave your torch on, then set it near a can of kerosene while you crouched down for the piece of steel you’d dropped.

“Cool. What are you going to weld?”

“I’m making—I was trying to make—a brand. But the metal wouldn’t bend. Guess I didn’t get it hot enough.”

“Guess not.” Sky nodded judiciously. “Why do you want a brand?”

She gave him a mysterious smile. “I’ve got something needs branding.”

“SO IT’S…going to need a little work,” Abby finished her carefully edited tale, trying for a note of brisk optimism. She never should have called her mother, but she’d promised to stay in touch. Phoning her friend Lark in Sedona to report their delay had given her the momentum, but it was now fading under her mother’s grilling. Seated in the swing, she held the cell phone to her ear and glanced overhead. Forty feet up, looking like a snowy, feather-fluffed owl perched in the crook of a branch, poor DC returned her rueful gaze. His rounded eyes were black pools of dismay. He could no sooner climb down this tree than he could fly.

“How much is ‘a little work’?” her mother demanded, as usual going straight to the bottom line. “And how much will this cost?”

“Oh, possibly a week’s worth.” Or more, if Whitey could only work weekends. And how long would it take him to scrounge the parts? “I’ve found—my neighbor found—an excellent mechanic, whose prices are very reasonable.” She hoped and prayed. Though Whitey moved about as swiftly as his Pekinese. If he cost half as much as a garage mechanic, but took three times as long to…

No. Surely Jack wouldn’t have recommended him if he couldn’t—

“What’s he do?”

“The mechanic? He’s a cowhand, I believe, at a ranch north of—”

“Your neighbor. The nice man who drove you into town. What does he do for a living? And please don’t tell me he’s a cowboy, because if he is, I understand that cowboys never settle down.”

“He’s a lawyer, Mom, not that it matters in the least.”

“O-oh… Lawyers are very good. They always make a living. The worse times get, the better they seem to do.”

Abby sighed softly. Her late father had been a portrait painter, a really wonderful artist, whose hobby was painting houses, as he’d always put it with a wink and a grin. They’d had enough money, but not a penny more, while he was able to work.

After he’d fallen three stories off a ladder and was no longer able to pursue his “hobby,” times had gotten much harder. But he’d stayed happy to the end, painting his portraits of their friends and neighbors and even getting the odd paying commission. He’d have been so proud to know that, seventeen years later, his work was starting to receive critical acclaim.

To Abby’s mother, who’d sold all but one of his portraits years ago, this was the final drop of frustration in a bitter cup.

“Is he a trial lawyer? Or perhaps corporate. They do extremely well.”

“He’s in family law, Mom. Small-town stuff, I imagine, but—listen to me—it doesn’t matter. I’m not shopping for a lawyer, a tailor or an Indian chief. Really, I’m not. I’ve only been divorced since March.”

“It’s never too early to plan.”

Abby bet she could hit the bus’s side mirror from here, if she threw the phone. She took a deep breath instead. “Mom, please try to understand. I’m not in the market for a man.

“And if I was, the last man on earth I’d choose—the very last—would be a lawyer. I’ve had it up to here with lawyers.”

She was only beginning to realize what a poor choice she’d made in a divorce lawyer. When she’d first hired him, Mr. Bizzle had seemed kindly and wise and avuncular. He’d agreed with her completely that two people who’d once loved each other shouldn’t try to snatch and maim when they parted. That the high road was always the best road.

Meanwhile, Steve had found a lawyer who was considered to be the best divorce specialist in northern New Jersey—a smiling, hard-eyed man who could smell a wounded wallet a mile away. Who thought the high road was for losers and fools. Who knew how to turn caring into weakness, selfishness to strength.

Under his cynical tutelage, the Lake family assets had melted away like dirty snow in springtime.

Abby had protested that only months before they’d seemed to be doing quite well, that between Steve’s income and her teaching salary, they’d amassed a reasonable cushion of stocks and savings. Where had that all gone? she’d wondered. Mr. Bizzle had patted her hand and sworn he’d get to the bottom of the mystery—well, he’d hire a couple of two-hundred-dollar-per-hour accountants to get to the bottom of the mystery—and then he’d squeezed her shoulders, walking her out of his office, and asked her for a date!

By the time the whole miserable process was finished, Steve’s lawyer had done magnificently for himself. And quite handsomely for Steve and his new family. Mr. Bizzle’s fee had taken a hefty slice of what remained, which seemed to console him for Abby’s inexplicable coolness to his advances.

So Abby had walked away from twelve years of marriage with twenty-thousand dollars that must be carefully hoarded for the coming year.

And a lifetime loathing of lawyers.

“You feel that way now, dear, but later on I’m sure you’ll—”

“Not now.” Abby shook her head emphatically. “And not later. I’ve learned my lesson.” About lawyers. About men in general. “You build your entire world around a man…” The way you did yourself, Mom, and look what it got you.

“You make him the almighty center of your world, and then one day he up and goes? Then you have nothing left.” Nothing, nothing. She was hollowed out—an empty echo where her heart used to be.

And when she gathered the strength to fill that hollow again, it would be with something other than the love of a man. Something more trustworthy and enduring. Something she could always count on—herself, happily and capably living a life she’d shaped to her own design. Meanwhile… Abby swallowed and found that the ragged lump she’d carried in her throat all this past winter had returned. Dadblast it, Mom! as Whitey would have put it.

“You have Skyler,” her mother pointed out.

Who blames me for leaving his dad! Abby’s eyes blurred; she tipped her head back and focused desperately on the blue patches beyond the leafy green. “Yes, Mom, I have Sky. And come to think of it, he must be starving by now. Why don’t I call you back in a day or two?”

JACK WAS SHARING a late in-house lunch with his friend Alec Fielding, a defense attorney who rented an office suite down the hall, in a three-story building in Durango. They ate together once a week or so, when whoever had lost their latest bet paid up with Reuben sandwiches and barbecue potato chips from the deli down the street.

This week Jack in his wisdom had bet that Lena Koo, the assistant district attorney, would not press criminal charges against Councilman Ferulli’s son, an impetuous youth who’d been injudicious enough to drink two six-packs of Coors, then sic his pet macaw Geronimo on an unfortunate girlfriend.

Instead, true to Jack’s prediction, assault charges had been dropped in favor of an agreement that young Ferulli take a course in rage management—and that he pay all plastic surgery fees for the young lady’s new and greatly improved nose.

“Food of the gods,” Jack proclaimed, more by way of self-congratulation than thanks as he waved his last half sandwich at his friend. Leaning forward over the ostrich-skin boots that he’d propped on his desk, he grabbed another chip.

“I really wanted that case,” Alec mourned, his own custom-booted feet resting on the coffee table in the conversation area at the other end of Jack’s office.

“Winning cases for councilmen’s sons is always good,” Jack allowed. “Political capital in the bank.”

Alec snorted. “That junior thug? I always looked on the bird as my client. I had three credible witnesses ready to testify that he’d been regularly and unduly provoked by the plaintiff.”

“And if you could’ve put the parrot on the stand…” They grinned at each other. “Polly wants to whack her?”

Alec toasted him with his can of root beer. “Self-defense all the way.” He reached for his chip bag. “So what’s new on the home front? The enchanting Kat robbed any banks this week? Shot any cowboys yet?”

A confirmed bachelor himself, Alec found tales of Kat’s escapades endlessly entertaining. He’d gone along this spring when they’d been invited to a branding party at Suntop Ranch. Kat had been horrified—outraged—when she realized they were actually “burning” the calves.

When her protests had been ignored, she’d offered to brand several of the highly amused cowhands to show ’em how it felt. At last Jack had given up and hustled her home and she hadn’t eaten meat since that day. Which was a problem, since her father had an extremely limited repertoire of meals to cook—and none of them featured tofu or soy milk.

“She scorched her eyebrows last night. But the real news is, I have a new neighbor.” Jack found himself describing the bus rescue. That led to a long and involved discussion of transmissions, then the best junkyards for used parts in southwestern Colorado.

Finally, as Alec stuffed his trash in a deli bag and rose to go, he asked casually, “So what’s she like?”

“Who?” Jack said, instantly on the defensive.

Alec smirked. “That good?”

“Oh, her. Um, nothing special.” Small, with dangerous curves and a mouth that quivered when she was upset. Warm velvety skin. “Lots of frizzy, mousy blond hair.” Almost but not quite the color of cornsilk, and it was rumpled and ripply, rather than frizzy, but why tell Fielding that?

“Hot?” Alec insisted.

Jack gave an irritated shrug. “Wouldn’t matter if she was. I’ve got my rules.”

“Yeah?” Alec folded his arms. “What are they this week?”

“This week and forever. Kelton’s Rules of Survival.” Jack held up one admonishing finger. “Rule One. Never marry.”

“Honored in the breach!” Alec jeered.

“And Rule Two,” Jack continued, ignoring him. “If you’re stupid enough to ignore Rule One, then never, NEVER marry a newly divorced woman. She’s in the midst of the Divorce Crazies. She hasn’t got a clue what she wants, but she’ll be flying off in all four directions at once, looking for it. And no doubt she hates men—temporarily, which’ll be just long enough to make your life hell.

“Or she hates men permanently—which means you’ll spend the rest of your miserable marriage atoning for her last husband’s sins.”

“But if she’s hotter than hot?” Alec teased, pausing in the doorway.

Jack flipped up his hands. “Then have a fling. Have a hot, short, sexy affair with her if you must. Be her Transition Man between her last cad and her next husband. Teach her how to smile again—then run for your life! But NEVER get serious about the newly divorced.”

Alec flashed that coming-in-for-the-kill grin he usually saved for hostile witnesses. “Who’s talking about marriage, old buddy? I was asking if the lady was bedworthy.” Seizing his exit line, he turned and walked.

Leaving Jack standing, mouth ajar, hands frozen in midair.

CHAPTER SIX

AROUND FOUR that afternoon the phone rang and Jack glanced up from a client’s divorce petition, which he’d been reviewing. The second button on his phone began to blink, meaning the caller was on hold.

A slender hand with lime-green fingernails curled around the edge of his door and cracked it open to reveal Emma Castillo, his quasi-legal, as Jack thought of her. She was wearing a tiny turquoise stud in her nose today, to match her blue-green jumpsuit and that one blue streak in her raven hair. “Are you in?”

“Depends on who’s calling.” He was about ready to wrap it up for the day. The whole point of working for oneself was the hours. Jack had slaved six years in a big-city law firm, struggling to make partner, before he’d seen the light and opted for a saner, less lucrative lifestyle in ski country.

“A woman with a sort of scratchy, stop-and-start voice. Um, Annie Leek? Locke?” Emma could be hopelessly preoccupied, when she was writing songs on the sly instead of filing.

“Abby Lake.” Jack grabbed for the phone, nodded his thanks to Emma, then turned halfway around in his swivel chair. “Kelton, here.”

“Oh…I was hoping you’d still be in,” Abby murmured, sounding not all that happy to find him.

He smiled in spite of himself. She did have a voice that scratched pleasantly along a man’s nerve endings—low and a bit breathy, as if she’d been nudged awake in the moonlight. Had just rolled over on her pillow and opened those big green drowsy eyes. “Hello, Abby. How’d you find my number?”

“Kat. She’s the reason I’m calling, actually.”

He groaned. “What’s she done now?”

“Not a thing. The poor kid’s been sanding all day, except for a lunch break, where we ate your burritos. But I was wondering, could I ask you to drop by a drugstore on your way home? If you bought an eyebrow pencil, I think I could improve on the clown face.”

An odd little glow started under his rib cage, if that wasn’t the corned beef returning to haunt him. “I could do that. What color?”

He listened carefully as she dithered, stopping and starting as Emma had noticed, deciding at last that perhaps two closely related shades of light brown and taupe—whatever that was—would give the most natural effect. “I can do that,” he repeated finally. Or rather, he could report the request word-for-word to any female clerk at a drugstore and likely come back with what was required.

“Oh, good!” She started to speak, paused, then added, “And I was wondering. About her hair. Do you ever take her to a hairdresser?”

“She always insists on my barber when she needs a trim.”

“Ah. Well, then. How would you feel if I tried to do something with that frizzled hair on her forehead? I was thinking bangs.”

Relief, that was what this sensation of warmth must be. To hand Kat over to somebody who knew what she was doing, for even a week… “As long as she’ll let you, cut away. Or you can wait till I get home to hold her down.”

“Oh, she’ll sit still for me.” On that score, Abby apparently had no doubts.

“Fine, have at her.” As Abby made sounds of imminent farewell, he added quickly, “Besides which, I’m glad you called. I forgot to ask this morning if you could use some groceries—cereal or juice or whatever. I’ll drive you into town for a real stock-up this weekend, but in the meantime?”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to…”

“Of course you can.” What had she planned to do, hobble down to Hansen’s on that ankle? “You can ask me for anything you need. You’re out west now, remember? Where the sky is big, the dogies are bold and the neighbors are neighborly, neighbor.”

She had a shy, husky laugh. Funny how a phone freed a man’s imagination, allowed him to draw his own mental pictures. New and improved pictures. He could see her swiping a soft tangle of hair out of her eyes when she laughed like that. Imagine her stretching sleepily beside him so that the covers rustled.

“Okay, neighbor, if you put it like that.” Abby paused, then murmured, “Milk?”

God, but she was sexy. “Skim, one percent or whole? Goat or cow? Quart or gallon?” He reached for a pad and pen. And how do you feel about T-bones? Because he was cooking tonight. Suddenly company seemed like an excellent idea. Best idea he’d had in months. “A gallon of skim—fine—and what else?”

JACK HAD ROLLED blithely over Abby’s protests that he must be tired after a day at work. Also that he shouldn’t feel the least responsibility to entertain the Lakes simply because they’d landed next door to him for a week.

Never once had it occurred to him that she’d really rather eat alone with Sky. That making dinner-table conversation with a stranger—an exuberant, overwhelmingly male stranger and a lawyer, at that!—was an ordeal she’d just as soon skip. A quiet meal, followed by a book and then bed would have suited her better.

But Sky’s face had lit up at the invitation. And she simply didn’t have the force of personality to refuse Jack once he’d gathered momentum. So Abby had smiled and gone along. In the end, she was glad. It hadn’t been such an ordeal, after all.

Abby had whisked Kat off to the Kelton’s upstairs bathroom, where she’d recreated the girl’s eyebrows, then cut her bangs while Jack and Sky prepared the meal.

The first half of the feast had been a rowdy foursome with the kids and Jack doing most of the talking, allowing Abby to sit back and applaud or tease or ask the odd question. And savor steak cooked to medium-rare perfection on a gas grill by the back door, then served in Jack’s kitchen along with deli potato salad, baked beans and coleslaw. Savor, too, the luscious light, since Kat had insisted they put out the overhead bulb and eat by the glow of a kerosene lantern, which she and her father used on camping trips.

“Which means this rates as a special occasion,” Jack had translated as she ran to get it. “We haven’t lit it since my birthday in April.”